Madhura Kharche: Final Assignment

For my tile design, I created a unit that could be multiplied at different scales to fit together and create any desired shapes. The tile is a 1’ x 1’ square with .5” thickness. 

The square shape allows it to be versatile and fit together with any scale of the same unit. The tile itself has a convex top, a portion of which is carved out to form a concave form. 

This combination, coupled with the versatility of the shape of the tile, I thought, would help create surfaces that allow sound rays to bounce off of the surface. My findings from the first part of this assignment using sonic supported that convex and concave shapes greatly influence the way sound waves bounce off of a surface.

The tile would be used as cladding on the interior walls of the theaters.

I let the tiles be thin enough to work as cladding to save material and production costs. The mass of the walls may be built with fire rated gypsum board attached to steel columns, and the tiles will be clad onto the boards.

Unit 

The multi surface sonic study shows how sound can be contained within the room  and bounced towards the insides and the back of the room using concave shaped walls.

Looking Out Week 15 Madhura Kharche

This project is called Porosity and it experiments with surfaces that have random degrees of porosities in varying scales. The design is based on how recursive porosity employs mathematical strategies to generate infinitely complex patterns. The lightweight, self supporting structure is designed digitally and fabricated using CNC mills and laser cutters. The use of flat sheet material allows the designers to bend, shape, cut, or ship the material as they like. 

Looking Out Week 14 Madhura Kharche

The Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. The building that it is situated in is an example of Brutalist Architecture. The concert hall was renovated by Diller Scofidio and Renfro and now has new interiors that use materials, technologies and equipment that best suit the showing of films, dances and other performances. 

Looking Out Week 13 Madhura Kharche

syn chron is a sculpture made by Carsten Nicolai in 2004. It is a sculpture that explores light, sound and architecture through its polygonal form. It has a translucent skin on some of its faces that allows the play of light and sound. Laser beams that are transmitted onto the surface of this shape heighten the experience of being in this structure. The structure truly plays on all the human senses to form a holistic architectural experience for visitors.

Looking Out Week 12 Madhura Kharche

Woodskin is a very dynamic design created as a submission made to open source design competition, Autoprogettazione 2.0. The designers were looking for a solution that would fulfill their need to create complex shapes, maybe even flexible walls or claddings. The idea was to have a skin that would adapt to any structure. This would allow designers to focus on the design of the structure because the cladding would perfectly fit it. The material is currently being used in different parts of the world as an innovative option for flexible walls or cladding.

Looking Out Week 11 Madhura Kharche

This design for a new cathedral in Strasbourg, France is a monumental one because of its scale and and the nature of its materials. The structure is made up of a series of unfolded concrete arches that create majestic volumes of light for the interior spaces. The floor plan of the building is an abstraction of traditional Gothic Cathedral, composed in the form of a Latin cross. The scale of the project heightens the massive nature of the building that comes from its heavy material.

Looking Out Week 10 Madhura Kharche

The Valley Performing Arts Center in Southern California's San Fernando Valley has theater spaces that fulfill visual and acoustic requirements of an ideal theater. The interior walls of these theater spaces have concave profiles that allow sound waved to bounce off of them in a way that optimizes the amplification of sound for the audience. The height of the ceiling and the materials in the interior further influence this acoustic quality of the theater.

Looking Out Week 9 Madhura Kharche

This is the Paris Concert Hall design. The building is designed with the goal of capturing views of the surrounding context in Paris and allowing people to experience various visual connections to this beautiful city. The relationship of the vertical circulation within this building to the increasingly interesting views of the Eiffel Tower was an important aspect for the designers. The fabrication of the shapes of the walls and their physical qualities has a great impact on how these would perform acoustically while a concert or performance is in session.

Looking Out Week 8 Madhura Kharche

This is the design for the Inverted Pyramid Museum. The main concept of the design is to have an inverted pyramid shaped structure that increases in size as it goes up, and clears out space on the main level for a park to grow. The gravity defying structure makes an interesting sight on account of its symmetry and glass exteriors that reflect the light onto the water basins around the architecture.

Assignment 5: Acoustics Research

Reverberation, simply put, is the prolongation of a sound. It is the collection of reflected sounds from the surfaces in an enclosed space.This means that the higher the number of times sound bounces around the interiors of a solid space, the higher the reverberation of sound in that space.

It is important to understand the range of prolongation that classifies as desirable reverberation. Reverberation times below 1.5 seconds and above 2.5 seconds either absorb too much of the sound or too little of it. 

 The way sound travels in the enclosed space relates to the dispersion of the sound waves. This dispersion of waves, unless controlled, excessively amplifies sound or creates unwanted echoes. The general solution to avoid such a problem is avoiding the use of reflective surfaces in the space on a large scale.  A great example of acoustic architecture is the MIT Chapel by Saarinen. The outside form of the chapel is a simple, continuous cylindrical brick structure, supported by a series of low arches. 

On the inside this cylindrical structure is offset and doubled with a slight modification- the interior walls are undulating brick. 



The surface that the brick pattern creates is perfect for achieving the ideal reverberation in that intimate interior space. One can actually experience the slight echo if he or she speaks, standing in the center of the room. The double width of the walls not only insulates the interior from the noise outside it, but also allows the interior space to become a space where sound waves emitted from the altar space are amplified just enough to be heard well throughout the interior space. The ceiling is also a 3d surface, made out of a plaster like material that allows the ceiling to contribute to the reverberation of sound.

"Saarinen stated that "since it [the chapel] is built largely of masonry, it should sound that way." However, Saarinen did allow for music and speech to be heard clearly. When the chapel is empty, the reverberation time at 500 cps is about 300 seconds. With an audience of 115 people, the reverberation time is only about 1.8 seconds. The hard plaster ceiling also helps to spread sound with its inverted cone shape. Red brick is used and gray,leaded glass in the narthex. (The chapel’s aluminum bell spire was sculpted by Theodore Roszak.) "

Sources: 

http://kubuildingtech.org/sarcweb/Assemblages00/CaseFinals/Lena%20Coleman-Kresge%20Chapel/Eero%20Saarinen-Bio.htmlhttp://www.acoustics101.com/default.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Chapel
www.acoustics101.com